Word: arctic
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...through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they...
That is what scientists call a feedback loop, and it's a nasty one, since once you uncap the Arctic Ocean, you unleash another beast: the comparatively warm layer of water about 600 ft. deep that circulates in and out of the Atlantic. "Remove the ice," says Woods Hole's Curry, "and the water starts talking to the atmosphere, releasing its heat. This is not a good thing...
Explorers have been searching for the Northwest Passage-the legendary sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific-since the 16th century, but their way has always been blocked by ice. Global warming is changing that. The deterioration of the Arctic ice pack, which had been shrinking at the rate of 10% per year, is starting to accelerate. Last year?s ice covered the smallest area ever recorded, and scientists now estimate that the passage could be ice-free-for at least part of the year-by 2050, if not sooner...
...accident raises sticky questions about the oil industry in Alaska at an awkward time for the Bush Administration and its supporters in Congress. While the Senate was busy last week passing a largely symbolic budget amendment in support of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to new drilling, Prudhoe Bay was facing the harsh realities of operating the state's existing wells...
...Alaska are slowly but inexorably drying up, along with the profits of the oil companies that operate there. Meanwhile, 30-year-old pipelines that stretch like a giant cobweb over the oil fields of the North Slope, a flat expanse between the majestic Brooks Range mountains and the Arctic shore, need more and costlier maintenance than ever. The new spill puts into sharp relief the same question that has stalemated the ANWR debate since the 1980s: Can oil companies focused on their bottom line be trusted to protect Alaska's fragile environment...